


[FIC AND PODFIC] your shadow at morning

by Thimblerig



Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [10]
Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Angst, Cristóbal Rios has prickles on his prickles, Cristóbal Rios is Very Sad, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fic & Podfic, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, No spoilers after 1.03, PTSD, Podfic, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, Prequel, the EHH is a huge labrador puppy in human shape, this didn't go where I was expecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23116072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: or, Five Reasons Captain Cristóbal Rios Hates The Emergency Hospitality Hologram
Relationships: Cristóbal Rios & La Sirena's Emergency Holograms, La Sirena's Emergency Hospitality Hologram & Cristóbal Rios, La Sirena's Emergency Medical Hologram & Cristóbal Rios
Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634554
Comments: 27
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L11VjaUInbyqR2-G9rhbbfU4yO7k_qNq/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) 

* * *

_one_

“You need to get laid…”

“Why, are you volunteering?” Cris says sourly. He’s on his knees picking at an intransigent valve in the environmental system. His probe slips, barking his knuckles, and he swears lightly to himself, clipping it back on his belt and trying another. From this position he can almost ignore the legs, clad in dark “skinny” jeans, that hover in his vision like an unwanted house guest.

“Me? Oh, no no, no,” says the Emergency Hospitality Hologram. Cris can feel the air move on the back of his neck as the Hologram waves a Hologram Clipboard that serves no functional purpose. “I’ve read studies. Skin-to-skin contact is the thing. Oxytocin! Nature’s best mood-stabiliser, my touch-hungry friend.”

Cris sighs. “I prefer my own company.” He ducks his head. Tries another probe.

“I have several first class services on file. Five-star ratings, all of them. Do you have any preferences for when I book an app-”

“Deactivate Emergency Hospitality Hologram.” It shimmers away into nothingness.

Cris twists again with his probe. Somewhere in the internal workings of the device something shifts, and a low, friendly hiss of air sounds.

_“Uh, Rios?”_

It’s his new contact, speaking doubtfully over a comm line that Rios had forgotten to close.

“Ship’s refit should be complete by the end of the day,” he says smoothly. “I expect to pick up your clients’ cargo by 1100 hours, standard time, Ms Musiker.”

_“See you then.”_

“Chau.”

* * *

  
  


_(two)_

The EHH stands proudly at the top of the stairs leading up from the Mess, silhouetted against the great window of the Bridge, and the rainbow-shifting colours of warp-space. Cris rubs his sleep-crusted eyes awkwardly. What is that ominous trilling? He can’t place it - what’s up with the ship’s systems, where -

“Surprise!”

The EHH shifts and Cris sees a bundle of soft, silky brown fur in the crook of the Hologram’s arm, shifting lazily. The melodious, resonant trill increases, gaining overtones and depths. “Guaranteed neutered,” the EHH declares.

“Ngk!” Cris points at the Tribble accusingly. “Those things are omnivores!” he snaps. “They lull their prey to sleep when food is scarce and then -” He used to have nightmares about their tiny mouths when he was a boy, he -

The Hologram’s face droops, sorrowful as a _concha su madre_ cartoon. “You don’t like pets?”

“Deactivate Emergency Hospitality Hologram!”

  
  


* * *

  
  


( _interlude_ )

“Why are you… like this?” Cris asks, late one night, staggering drunk off the transporter pad.

“We are but as we are made,” the Emergency Medical Hologram says dryly, catching his arm and sliding his shoulder under Cris as he topples, reeling.

“No, no,” Cris waves his free arm, the one with a bottle of red wine, at his face, and then at the EMH’s neatly groomed, sardonic visage. “There’s a reason. Can’t (hic) can’t remem… Oh, hey! Stars…” he twists suddenly, falling again, and suddenly there is a flare of light and air and the Emergency Hospitality Hologram has Cris’s other arm wrapped across his shoulders. “Hi,” Cris smiles up at the Hologram. He flaps at the Hologram’s arm feebly. 

“Hi back,” says the EHH, smiling down at him.

The bottle drops, shattering into a thousand, thousand pieces, stars on the dark floor, and the blood in it spreads, viscous and lethal. Cris shuts his eyes.

Against the drumming in his ears he hears them argue. 

_“... all I’m saying is, synthehol has almost as much bang and none of the hangover -”_

_“(sigh) Let’s just get the Captain to bed first, oh and he’s barefoot, just lovely. I need some more hands, here!”_

Cris blinks his eyes open and there are more of him stepped out of the air and reaching for his ankles, and soon they bear him deeper into the ship, four of them about him like the carriers of a bier.

* * *

_three_

The Spotted Botanicula actually does try to eat him, catching his arm with a sinuous tentacle when he’s drunk and unwary. It tugs him gently, persistently to the acid reservoir at the heart of one its bell-flowers.

Kinda cute, really. 

But by now Cris feels there is a principle to be upheld.

“I have a spray for that!”

“Deactivate…”

* * *

_four_

Cris does bring a lover home. Once.

Cal is tall and thin and bony. Bookish. Their knobbly wrists poke out of their sleeves and behind their gold-rimmed spectacles eyes iridescent as beetle-wings shine against their dark skin. They smell of coffee, and book-dust, and petrichor, and when Cris slides his hand under their jersey to the warm smooth skin underneath they shudder agreeably.

He’s backed against the door of his quarters, fumbling for the lock-pad, when it slides open behind him and the pair of them fall into a room rich and heavy and laden with red roses, the reek of them cloying on his tongue.

“Uh,” says Cal. “This is a bit of a…” They stop. “You like it romantic?” they try.

“Wrong room!” Cris says brightly, taking Cal’s hand and kissing their inner wrist before drawing them back into the hall. The beds in the Crew quarters aren’t so nice, but -”

“Can I get you two some champagne?” The EHH winks.

“Deactivate!”

* * *

_(interlude)_

It’s late, it’s always late, and he’s padding barefoot through the halls. He left his football somewhere and toeing it around some might calm the prickles under his skin and running down his bones. Just maybe.

Voices.

Soft and secret.

Cris has no live crew for a reason, he - flattens himself to the wall, soft and secret. Voices, moving above him, on the Operations level. His eyes slide up and he sees flickering people, two of them.

_“... just want, I only want…”_

_“Yes, I know, I know…”_

_“... to be happy.”_

_“You do your best we know, just, try a little more softly-softly, perhaps. The Freecloud Hotel Aesthetic isn’t for every…”_

It’s only the Holograms. As Cris watches the EMH turns his head and looks down at him, dark eyes unreadable, before ushering Mr Hospitality along with a hand on his back.

* * *

_five_

“Ta da!”

“What have you done?” Cris asks suspiciously. His head aches and the side of his thigh burns where a disruptor bolt zipped past a little close but he’s fine, he’s _fine,_ just tired. He even got paid…

“I brought you Home!” the Emergency Hospitality Hologram exclaims, and the door to the Captain’s Quarters hiss open. Soft amber lights beckon to him.

Heart in his throat, Cris steps forward, into a room of cream walls and richly coloured cloth. There are windows, still, of the (right) wrong shape, showing the stars. A slip of paper with elegant, diagonal calligraphy is pasted to the plexiglass.

“It took a while, I swear,” the Hologram burbles, “I don’t know why there aren’t any records of the ship but -”

“You found one of my old pictures,” Cris says distantly. His eyes turn to the dresser where an ugly pasteboard card sits, handmade in gaudy colours, with little silver stars already peeling at the corners. He touches it gingerly with the back of his crooked finger and sees the names inside - the scrawled, the adorned, the machine-perfect Vulcan handwriting… Is there someone behind him? The smell in here is wrong, just a simple homy vanilla and not - The smell is wrong. But if he only turns, if he -

“Do you like it?” the Hologram asks shyly. “I can tweak it to your specs, of course.”

In a whirl Cris has him by two clenched handfuls of his natty turtleneck, running the Hologram backwards, crashing and stumbling and someone is screaming and when Cris opens his eyes again he has the Hologram bent backwards over a rail with the pit of the engine burning beneath them.

It’s a pointless display: the Hologram can’t be hurt.

But Cris’s throat is jagged glass and viscous blood when he snarls, “Never do that again, never _show_ yourself to me again, do you understand? I will - I will - He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and eases the pair of them upright, releasing his tetany-grip on the Hologram’s imagined clothing and patting him before stepping back, shaking. The EHH nods quickly and shivers into the air.

“What are you looking at?” he snarls to the other Holograms dotted around him, Medical and Navigation and Tactics and Engineering... still, without breath, unblinking.

“Nothing, Cap’n,” says Navigation.

A touch at his elbow. “I’m taking you upstairs,” says the EMH. A smile touches his lips. “Medic’s orders.” Cris staggers and the Hologram’s grip tightens, gentle and secure.

His quarters are real again when they return, dull steel and drab leather furniture and bare walls. Cris lies still where they laid him down, staring upwards and reminding himself to breathe.

“Lo siento,” he says to the air.

“We know, Captain,” says the EMH, and takes himself away.

  
  
  
  


_What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow  
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,   
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only   
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,   
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,   
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only   
There is shadow under this red rock,   
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),   
And I will show you something different from either   
Your shadow at morning striding behind you   
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;   
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. _

from “The Wasteland” by T S Eliot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry.
> 
> I didn't mean it to get that dark.
> 
> Things just happened.
> 
> ¡Lo siento!
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> // I made up the bit about Tribbles being omnivores. Considering cute little squirrels and hopping mice will eat meat, I don't think it unlikely that they might extend their diet, given cause. (The Klingon Tribble Extermination Squads were true heroes.)
> 
> // Also, the scene on the _ibn Majid_ was made up entirely out of whole cloth. Shrug. I know something bad happened there, so I'm trying to hint without committing to large swaths of plot.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L11VjaUInbyqR2-G9rhbbfU4yO7k_qNq/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) 

* * *

Format: MP3  
Length: 14:38  
Size: 21.37 MB

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Programs Used: Audio Evolution (Mobile); Logopit Plus; Music Editor
> 
> Cover Image: Pixabay stock image
> 
> Music/SFX: https://freesound.org/people/ValentinSosnitskiy/sounds/534933/


End file.
